And Lightning Strikes
by that dark-haired girl
Summary: Parvati stays away from all tropical fruits, save pineapples, because of this. - Twenty facts about Parvati Patil, in no particular order.


A/N - The title of this piece comes from a line in the Fleetwood Mac song "_Gypsy_". This is for msllamalover, who requested Parvati not too long ago. I hope you like it!

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**_And Lightning Strikes_**

_(Twenty True Facts about Parvati Indira Patil)_

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20. Parvati is the older twin by twenty-six minutes, born headfirst and perfectly healthy. Padma was a breech-baby, and came out with the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around her neck. She almost died.

Sometimes, selfishly, Parvati wonders what life would have been like if she had been raised an only child.

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19. There are some days when she really misses Pansy. Their fathers worked together as Healers at St. Mungo's and they had been best friends all through their girlhood, and it wasn't until they went to Hogwarts did their friendship start to show any cracks. It wasn't until Pansy's other best friend, Draco Malfoy, humiliated Neville Longbottom during their Broom Flight class that Parvati realized that separate Houses _might_ be further than just separate tables at mealtimes, and after that, things changed between them. Her first-ever detention was only because she slapped Pansy after Charms for calling Lavender a "Mudblood."

They _have_ reconnected as the years have gone on, mostly because of what happened between Dean and Pansy's daughter, but Parvati knows that things can never be the same between them.

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18. The first time Anthony takes her to one of the religious services at his temple, Parvati is in awe. It is not as ornate as the Hindu temples of her childhood, or even the church Seamus takes Lavender to on Sundays, but it is still beautiful in it's own, understated way; the ark where the Torahs are kept the only bright spot in the large room. She has never been particularly religious – not like her parents or Padma – but sitting with Anthony and his family amongst the rest of the congregation made her feel something she thought had died inside her, long ago.

When she kisses her fingers after touching the Torah the Rabbi carries through the crowd of worshippers, Parvati feels something close to peaceful.

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17. Parvati is allergic to mangos. She learned this the hard way when she was four and she broke out in hives after taking one bite. When her throat closed up and her head practically swelled up to the size of a pumpkin, she had to be rushed to the emergency room.

Parvati stays away from all tropical fruits, save pineapples, because of this.

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16. Divination was her favorite class. She loved the mystery of it all; the subtle intricacies of tea leaves and tarot cards, of how something as innocuous as an egg yolk or apple peels could tell the future. It always frustrated her that she couldn't have visions, not like Professor Trelawney or Lavender could. She once she brewed a potion (that wasn't exactly _legal_ in the strictest sense, either) in an effort to achieve something similar to what they felt when their Inner Eye called out to them.

It wasn't a very good experience, and she vowed to never try anything like that ever again

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15. She hates eggplants and positively refuses to eat them.

There's no rational reason why.

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14. Her first kiss was when she was fourteen, with that dashing French student from Beauxbatons who asked her to dance at the Yule Ball. His name was Martin Boiché and he told her that she was the prettiest girl in the room, and when they walked out to the enchanted gardens beyond the Great Hall, Parvati thought that she was in love. They dated for a few months after the year was over, tried to keep the long-distance relationship afloat, but in the end they decided that it was better that they stayed friends, instead.

And besides…Dean was looming on Parvati's horizon, then. Even if Martin had the softest hands and the most beautiful blue eyes, he couldn't compare to just how _dreamy_ Dean was.

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13. There are some days where she misses New York City. She doesn't miss the people, not by a long shot, but there are some days where she misses the way the city looked at night, or how she could walk down nearly any street corner and get fresh fruit, or how _friendly_ all the places she worked seemed to feel, even when they were seedy bars and tiny corner shops. She even misses how beautiful Central Park was in the springtime, a little oasis smack dab in the middle of a bustling metropolis, and how she could lie on a blanket in the grass with a book and not be disturbed by anyone.

She's not ready to, not yet, but one day she wants to take Anthony there and show him all the beautiful little places she found.

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12. Her parents loved to tell stories about growing up in India. Her father loved to talk about the village his family was born in, how the Diwali lights used to look when they were reflected in the water of the river by his home, of his mother cooking and his brothers playing and his father with his hands, big and wide. Her mother would tell the funniest stories about her sisters, of cooking with her grandmother, of how she and her husband met and saved for years before they had enough to come to England.

Padma absolutely _loved_ those stories, and asked to hear them as much as she could. Parvati didn't like them only because they made her feel guilty for having so much more than her parents did.

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11. She isn't sure that she'll ever be able to forgive Dean; not for the way he treated her, not for the things he said, not for the way they ended their relationship, not for the way he convinced her to leave the country and escape her pain through distance (although, she is rather glad that she did not turn to drugs or alcohol, like some of her fellow veterans did in the years after the war), and _especially_ not for the time that he hit her.

But even though she can't forgive him, she understands his relationship with Violet Finch-Fletchley better than most people. Dean needs someone who isn't broken like he is; someone who hasn't been touched by the war. Even though the girl is young enough to be his daughter, Parvati understands.

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10. Padma was not a very nice girl, not when they were children and not even when they went to Hogwarts. She was selfish and uptight, and arrogant and bossy and more than a little cruel when she wanted to be. Padma hated Lavender and used to insult her in languages she _knew_ Lavender wouldn't understand – not even changing her tone, making it sound like she was complimenting her blouse and not calling her a whore – and even when they were at home, she always made a big show about how she "_embraced their culture_" and Parvati was just an "_assimilated menace_", like she was a traitor to all of India just for liking the Spice Girls.

Whenever people talk about how _wonderful_ Padma was, how _smart_ and _bright_ and what a magnificent future she _might_ have had, Parvati has a hard time putting their recollections – _Padma the Brilliant, Padma the Brave, St. Padma of Ravenclaw Tower_ – with the bossy little demon she grew up with.

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9. Shoes are Parvati's absolute favorite article of clothing. She has over twenty pairs of shoes, from spiky stiletto heels to comfortable trainers, from chunky-heeled, thigh-high boots to ballet flats charmed to match the color of her outfits. Her favorite pair of shoes is a tie between a set of Roman sandals that lace up her calves and a pair of red heels that sparkle in the sunlight.

Every time she spends more than ten minutes deciding what pair she wants to wear that day, Anthony rolls his eyes and calls her "Imelda Marcos". Parvati laughs when he does this only because she doesn't know who Imelda Marcos is.

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8. She's deathly afraid of spiders.

The Acromantulas that invaded the Great Hall during the Battle of Hogwarts did not help matters any.

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7. There was one day, back in her fifth year, when she was so unbelievably stressed by the threat of her impending O.W.L.s that she nearly had a panic attack. After slamming her Transfiguration textbook shut, Parvati left the Common Room under the guise of getting some fresh air and snuck out to the Quidditch pitch. When she left, she had the full intention of just lying back and resting on the grass. When she got there, she found Padma already stretched out on a blanket doing the exact same thing. She lay down next to her sister and the two of them had a long conversation about boys and school and what they were going to do when the summer came. They stayed out there until the sun went down and Padma even hugged her before she went back inside.

Parvati treasures that memory of her sister, not because it was a nice moment, but because it is one of only seven times that she can remember Padma being nice to her.

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6. She still keeps in touch with Martin. Anthony doesn't know, and Dean never knew to begin with, but they still exchange letters with a decent regularity. He has a family, a Herbologist wife and two lovely daughters, and he recently wrote a novel documenting their experiences living as Muggles for the past five years. He is just as charming and just as clever in his elegantly-penned letters as he was when she first met him, and he claims that she sounds as sweet and silly as she did back then.

He wants her to come to Paris and visit one day, but Parvati doesn't want to break the illusion.

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5. Arithmancy was never her favorite subject, but she was good at it and even got better marks than Padma on their tests. She was never fond of mathematics when she was younger, but she kept at it, and Arithmancy taught her how to make numbers dance and probabilities twist. She even invented a secret arithmetical code one summer, when she and Lavender decided to hide secret messages in their letters to each other.

Seventh year, this code came in handy on more than one occasions, when the D.A. needed to get messages to one another and couldn't reach their Galleon, they could use Parvati's code and claim that it was only their "Arithmancy homework" if they were caught.

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4. For her birthday, not long after they had gotten married, Anthony gave Parvati an intricately carved wooden box that his Uncle Arthur had designed just for her. She keeps small trinkets in it, nothing that would mean anything to anyone else, but little mementos to remind her of times gone by. To date, the box contains a photograph of her and Harry at the Yule Ball, a dried rose, one of Lavender's earrings, her D.A. Galleon, a torn piece of sheet music, a silver dollar coin, a photograph of her parents from when they were living in India, a golden butterfly hairclip, a pencil sketch of Dean's, and drawing her son Daniel painted for her one rainy afternoon.

Buried underneath everything else are the Ravenclaw patch from her sisters' school robe and the Gryffindor patch from hers.

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3. She'd thought the sense of wonder she felt at finding _her_ wand would never be matched, and she was right. Then, the day came that she and Anthony took their son and daughter to Ollivander's for their own wands.

When Hannah produced purple sparks on her very first try, Parvati turned away and pretended to be interested in a potted plant in the corner before anyone saw her tears.

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2. On the day of her wedding to Seamus, she tells Lavender that she has been more like her sister than Padma ever was. She means it, possibly more than she ever has, and Lavender tears up and hugs her tightly…or at least, as tightly as the massive amount of fabric Lavender is buried in will allow. She does not feel the bad when she says it. Not in the slightest bit.

It is, after all, the truth.

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1. Her mother could lecture for hours on why Parvati should never cut her hair. All her life, Parvati hated her long, uncontrollable hair, made worse by the fact that Padma's never seemed to tangle or get split-ends like Parvati's did. Her mother insisted on keeping it long, tying both her daughter's hair into plaits that hung heavy down their backs, because according to her, "_a woman's beauty is in her hair_."

The first thing Parvati does, once the war is over and the ashes of her family are scattered in a country she had never wanted to visit, is cut off her braid.

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End file.
